“She does not see many people nowadays,” said Cicely; “I fancy she is breaking up rather.  She was very fond of the son who went down, you know.”

“She has seen a great many of the things she cared for go down,” said Yeovil; “it is a sad old life that is left to her, when one thinks of all that the past has been to her, of the part she used to play in the world, the work she used to get through.  It used to seem as though she could never grow old, as if she would die standing up, with some unfinished command on her lips.  And now I suppose her tragedy is that she has grown old, bitterly old, and cannot die.”

Cicely was silent for a moment, and seemed about to leave the room.  Then she turned back and said: 

“I don’t think I would say anything about Gorla to her if I were you.”

“It would not have occurred to me to drag her name into our conversation,” said Yeovil coldly, “but in any case the accounts of her dancing performance will have reached Torywood through the newspapers—­also the record of your racially-blended supper-party.”

Cicely said nothing.  She knew that by last night’s affair she had definitely identified herself in public opinion with the Shalem clique, and that many of her old friends would look on her with distrust and suspicion on that account.  It was unfortunate, but she reckoned it a lesser evil than tearing herself away from her London life, its successes and pleasures and possibilities.  These social dislocations and severing of friendships were to be looked for after any great and violent change in State affairs.  It was Yeovil’s attitude that really troubled her; she would not give way to his prejudices and accept his point of view, but she knew that a victory that involved estrangement from him would only bring a mockery of happiness.  She still hoped that he would come round to an acceptance of established facts and deaden his political malaise in the absorbing distraction of field sports.  The visit to Torywood was a misfortune; it might just turn the balance in the undesired direction.  Only a few weeks of late summer and early autumn remained before the hunting season, and its preparations would be at hand, and Yeovil might be caught in the meshes of an old enthusiasm; in those few weeks, however, he might be fired by another sort of enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which would sooner or later mean voluntary or enforced exile for his part, and the probable breaking up of her own social plans and ambitions.

But Cicely knew something of the futility of improvising objections where no real obstacle exists.  The visit to Torywood was a graceful attention on Yeovil’s part to an old friend; there was no decent ground on which it could be opposed.  If the influence of that visit came athwart Yeovil’s life and hers with disastrous effect, that was “Kismet.”

And once again the reek from her burned and smouldering boats mingled threateningly with the incense fumes of her Te Deum for victory.  She left the room, and Yeovil turned once more to an item of news in the morning’s papers that had already arrested his attention.  The Imperial Aufklarung on the subject of military service was to be made public in the course of the day.